Freedom of Religion or Belief - and abortion

 At the beginning of July the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office of the UK Government hosted an international ministerial meeting on "Freedom of Religion or Belief". My attention was first drawn to this meeting by Mgr Michael Nazir Ali's article in the September/October issue of FAITH Magazine: Is Freedom of Religion or Belief now politically mainstream? My attention was drawn again by the BBC's reporting of the reaction of an abortion provider to the appointment of Therese Coffey as Secretary of State for Health and, indeed, to Liz Truss's appointment as prime minister: Therese Coffey's views on abortion concerning, charity says. 

Mgr Nazir Ali's article makes reference to "fringe" events that took place on the sidelines of the main conference, addressing violations of freedom of religion and belief in different situations around the world. Aid to the Church in Need ran one of these "fringe" events, discussing the persecution of Christians in Syria and Iraq: Christian persecution never ended in the Middle East. This page indicates the activities of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief at the time of the ministerial meeting.

However, though Mgr Nazir Ali does not mention it, there also appears to be an assimilation of an idea of "conscientious choice for abortion" into the notion of freedom of belief, as evidenced by what the executive director of Humanists UK said during the opening ceremony of the main conference:

“If FoRB is to be for everyone everywhere, we must all resist the temptation to impose our beliefs on others. This is how so many violations of FoRB originate. That is true of the Christian in China whose atheist government prevents her from congregating freely as her conscience leads her and of the non-religious woman in the West when Christians in her Government block her conscientious choice of an abortion or any other practice. Illiberal totalitarianism, whether atheist, Christian, Islamic: many forces limit freedom of religion or belief today. All of us are in the minority somewhere and all of us have brothers and sisters subject somewhere to the vilest of persecution.”

 The main conference resulted in number of statements that participating nations were invited to sign up to. The statement that has brought particular attention to Liz Truss, who at the time of the conference was the UK Foreign Secretary, is the one about freedom of religion or belief and gender equality. The "final" version that now appears on the FCDO website is here: Freedom of Religion or Belief and Gender Equality. However, the first bullet point of the original version (my italics added) indicated a commitment to:

uphold and protect gender equality, non-discrimination and freedom of religion or belief. Discriminatory personal status laws, laws that allow harmful practices, or restrict women’s and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, bodily autonomy, and other laws that justify, condone, or reinforce violence, discrimination, or inequalities on the grounds of religion, belief or gender should be repealed.

That bullet point now reads:

uphold and protect gender equality, non-discrimination and freedom of religion or belief. Challenge discriminatory laws that justify, condone, or reinforce violence, discrimination, or inequalities on the grounds of religion, belief or gender and that restrict women and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of human right.

 The change appears to have been made after the conclusion of the conference, and Liz Truss has defended it in parliament on the grounds that it allows a greater degree of unity among conference participants.

But once again, what is to be seen here is an advocacy in favour of abortion based in a consideration that does not reference the ethical rights or wrongs of abortion but a contrived assimilation of a rather distinct consideration. In the case of America's Roe vs. Wade judgement it was a consideration of privacy as expressed in the US constitution; in the case of the extension of legalised abortion to Northern Ireland it was a consideration of whether or not travel to access abortion was degrading treatment; and now it is a contrived inclusion of gender as a consideration in freedom of religion or belief. 

Whilst Christians should certainly advocate for the freedom of others with regards to their differing religion or belief, in a way that is absolute and universal, there is a need to resist the absorption into that universality advocacy for falsely contrived rights that do not exist as rights properly so called.